How I Used My Writing Skills To Build My Own Business

I Was Almost Too Afraid To Get Out Of The Car

I sat across the street in my car staring at the door to building number 824. I was 21 years old.

If I didn’t go inside soon, I’d be late for the interview.

But the scene gave me pause. When I was a kid, this was one of Baltimore City’s no-go neighborhoods. In fact, though I’d spent all of my 21 years living in Baltimore, I’d never driven down East Baltimore Street before.

The townhouses along both sides of the street appeared mostly empty and derelict. The sidewalks were cracked, and the vacant lot on the corner was littered with beer cans and overgrown with weeds.

What was I getting into, I wondered as I finally got out of the car and locked it behind me.

If I hadn’t mustered the courage to follow through with that interview that day… and if I hadn’t been offered the position I was there interviewing for… would I be writing to you today from Panama?

Impossible to say but hard to imagine.

I wanted to be a writer, and I had a boyfriend in Baltimore. Not many publishing houses in Baltimore.

If I’d known that Agora was a self-described direct-mail publisher… and if I’d understood what that meant… I probably wouldn’t have gone to work there. I had big ideas about the sort of writer I wanted to be. Contributing to the production of junk mail wasn’t part of the plan.

But I was young and naïve and thankful for the chance to earn a living editing copy. It was a foot in the door that would lead eventually, I hoped, to a chance to earn a living writing copy.

It wasn’t long before that was the case. Agora, I discovered, had a big appetite for content and was happy to farm its own talent.

And not only writers. Agora encouraged ambition and promoted from within for all roles. When I showed an interest in understanding the business side of the business, the owner of the business, Bill Bonner, began inviting me to marketing and planning meetings.

Eventually I recognized something remarkable. The place where I’d landed so accidentally was providing not only a chance to make a living as a writer… but also a chance to assimilate a strategy for using writing to build a business.

Not a small side business but a scalable one that could become as big as the writer-entrepreneur behind it was prepared to push for it to be.

The dawn of the Internet Age made the model more efficient.

Over the 23 years that I was part of Agora, I participated in building a series of multimillion-dollar businesses. In 2007, I set off to give it a try on my own. I was captivated by the idea that my love of the written word could translate into a going concern.

I could get up each morning, sit down at my laptop, tap out an article of interest (hopefully)… and thereby generate cash flow!

And I could do it from anywhere in the world.

I enjoy traveling almost as much as I enjoy writing… so a business built on and supporting both? For me, that was a home run.

I wanted control, flexibility, and unlimited upside. I wanted to see how big a business I could build on my own, without the resources of a multinational company behind me.

I took a giant leap of faith in myself a decade ago. I’ve worked hard ever since, yes, but I’ve also been able to take complete control of my life and of my family’s future.

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Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.